O-bama! O-bama!
posted by Jmac at 12:07 PM
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
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- Name: Jmac
- Location: Athens, Georgia, United States
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Previous Posts
- Reality vs. paranoia
- Couple of things
- The Safe As Houses Water Challenge
- Misguided defenses
- Woo-hoo!
- Couple of things
- Sad, but not unexpected
- The Safe As Houses Water Challenge
- End of an era
- That's a plan to discuss
10 Comments:
I will be interested to see if Richardson/Biden/Dodd/Kucinich approve and/or encourage their caucus-goers to shift to a Obama or Edwards in particular when it becomes apparent on caucus night that their preferred candidate is not going to win.
I understand that Kucinich did this for Edwards in 04, which contributed to his #2 showing in Iowa.
Darren
BO is getting his 15 minutes.
Problem is, for him, Iowa is very nearly a must-win. HRC can afford to lose it; she'll roll in NH.
BO has no such luxury.
Second anonymous: I just don't see us having a one-state (or two-state) primary season this time around, as evidenced by the thawing groupthink reflected in the polls.
I don't know what "thawing groupthink" means.
Guess I'm not hip enough.
He means the media is pretty much force-feeding us a Giuliani v. Clinton general election. They have proclaimed it virtually a foregone conclusion. They construct a general 'narrative' that reads this way, all other candidates are 'challengers', talk is centered on the 'favorite' status G and C, etc.
And this gets reflected, arguably, in polls. Especially b/c at this early stage (and for folks who aren't political junkies, it is still quite early), it's all about name recognition. These pollsters call somebody up and read six or eight names to them. Who is more likely to get picked when the media has been talking about two people as the frontrunners since 2005?
That's the 'groupthink.' To a lot of people who lean left, especially those who are outraged about Iraq, Hillary Clinton is a horrible candidate. She has been embarrassingly inconsistent on the war. She claims she was 'fooled' by evil Bush into voting for the war, yet she wants to be the leader of the free world. There were people in Congress who weren't fooled from the very beginning, you know... Anyway, Hillary keeps topping the polls even though most people probably find Obama more inspiring (and probably some others like Biden, too). But Hillary's the frontrunner, and people are stupid about wanting to vote for who's already 'winning.'
Anyway, this process can be reversed, and I assume that's what Mike meant when he said the groupthink is 'thawing.' He means that people are starting to move more and more towards Obama, despite the two and a half straight years of Hillary talk from everyone.
I think he's a bit optimistic and that Hillary will still win, but I hope I'm wrong.
Ah. Thanks.
If BO's foreign policy position is: The world would be a better place if Saddam & Sons were still running Iraq, I think I'll pass.
And so, at the end of the day, will most voters.
Of course, you'll notice--as have I--that the Dems are no longer riding the We're Gonna Lose In Iraq train. Not enough passenger, especially as it looks like we're winning.
You can always hope, though.
"If BO's foreign policy position is: The world would be a better place if Saddam & Sons were still running Iraq, I think I'll pass."
anonymous 8:44am
I'm guessing this commenter will not be voting in his state's democratic primary. Or for the democratic nominee come November, whoever that turns out to be.
Darren
xon: Yep, that's pretty much it.
I use the term 'thawing groupthink' as a bit of free-association, implying that groupthink is congealed from fear, anger, hope, and other irrationality. If you happen to run into a jello mold over the holidays, that's pretty much the model I'm working with nowadays.
After this last debate or two, that groupthink is starting to thaw (or melt). I'll put it on the last debate, where Hillary pretty much admitted that military force will factor into negotiations with Iran.
This translates into waffling, as you've mentioned, so the far left are looking elsewhere.
I think Hillary might have driven off the "leave Iraq" contingent during the last debate, by basically admitting we'll remain in Iran's business anyway.
In general, though, I think the Democrats' White House strategy for the last several elections has been to admit as little as possible, and wait for the electorate to hand them the keys. This means handing the White House to whatever scrub our taliban happen to nominate, as a means of increasing the chances of future Democrat candidates. I.e, the strategy is built on generating groupthink.
By adopting that strategy, the most dangerous situation is what we're in now, and that's an extended election cycle. This means the selected candidate (Hillary, in this case) has a greatly increased chance of the kind of platform exposure that melts the groupthink, and/or worse, forces the party to eat its own rhetoric.
This also means that if significant challenge(r)s don't roll over after the first two or three states' primaries, that candidate's nomination will be at risk.
Clinton's lead in New Hampshire is dropping, too. I don't think we should presume she has the first primary locked up.
Just as in 2004, casual voters tend to listen to conventional wisdom and repeat it back to the pollsters until right before the primaries actually begin. Then when they have to face pulling a lever, they have a gutcheck moment where they have to decide who THEY actually want to see win. Often it's not the previously ordained frontrunner, who they repeated to pollsters because of name recognition or a media-induced belief that person was the frontrunner and therefore probably the best candidate too.
I really would love to see Hillary Clinton follow the Howard Dean trajectory. That might piss off some of my former Deaniac friends, but I don't care.
Kerry polled at 4% in December 2003. Not sayin', just sayin'...
And anonymous, some of us opposed the war from the beginning on principle. Sure, some folks are only opposing it for political reasons, which leaves them feeling weird if the war ends up succeeding (though I don't see why war supporters are getting so excited about it again...yawn), but not everybody caluclates their position based on political ambition.
I belive there was no just cause for going to war with Iraq in 2003. That's just the way it is, and so the war is unjust no matter how well or how poorly it goes. If we had wrapped everything up in a month, it was still an unjust war. If we stay for twenty years and finally slink away with our tail between our legs, it's an unjust war. Analysis of the justice of the thing ought not hinge on whether or not it 'works.'
I don't want the U.S. to act like an empire, benevolent or not. There are good principled reasons for opposing such a posture, even though I'm sure we can win a few wars along the way. But I don't think we should be an empire, and 'winning' in Iraq (whatever that means...) isn't going to make me say "Rah rah, by jingo, I suppose empire is a good idea afterall!"
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